The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities — that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city's population.
In this mind-bending talk from TEDGlobal he shows how it works and how similar laws hold for organisms and corporations.
Good summary of the American sickness.
William Pfaff – truthdig – 02/11/11
The theme of most political and social commentary is that things are more complicated than you think. For once, I wish to write that things are simpler than you think. This concerns two matters at the core of the present American political crisis.
The first is that control over the government has passed all but completely into the hands of business corporations. The country has become a plutocracy. This has occurred because corporations are the principal supplier of funds essential to the election of federal officials—the president and the members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and through them, the members of the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary, all of whom are nominated and confirmed by the elected officials of the executive and legislative branches of the government.
. . . . . . .
I spoke of a second source of American crisis to which there is a simple solution, an intellectual solution, which to impose would require conversion of the hard hearts and biased minds of a sizable part of the international economic community (at least that part of it educated at the University of Chicago since the Second World War), as well as a near-revolutionary change in how the American government presently functions (see above). The crisis is easily described as the 1 percent problem. One percent of the American population receives income equivalent to the other 99 percent put together.
This is caused by the consensus decision of the economists and business schools to define profit as the sole criterion of corporation efficiency and public (and civic) worth. The automatic consequence of this has been the de-industrialization of the United States, the export of its manufacturing capacity, unemployment in the U.S. comparable to that of the Great Depression, poverty levels with no modern American precedent, and the moral corruption of American politics.
Mike Bloomberg's Marie Antoinette Moment
Rolling Stone, November 3, 11:00 AM ET
Last year I had a chance to see New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg up close at the Huffington Post’s “Game Changers” event. I was standing right behind the guy when he was introduced by Nora Ephron, and watched as the would-be third party powerhouse wowed the liberal crowd with one zinger after another.
Includes short video.
The whole game was based on one new innovation: the derivative instruments like CDOs that allowed them to take junk-rated home loans and turn them into AAA-rated instruments. It was not Barney Frank who made it possible for Goldman, Sachs to sell the home loan of an occasionally-employed janitor in Oakland or Detroit as something just as safe as, and more profitable than, a United States Treasury Bill. This was something they cooked up entirely by themselves and developed solely with the aim of making more money.
Read full skewering of Mike Bloomberg.
See Also:
Review: Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
QUOTE: The Summum Bonum (Highest Good) of Social Capitalism
Summum Bonum = Latin for the highest good.
The tranformation of Capitalism from an ancillary activity (as opposed to the activities of monarchs) into an engine of material and technological bounty was through the (likely accidental) introduction of an ethical/moral substrate. This ethical substrate enabled a rate of cummulative progress that went far, far beyond what was possible with a traditional Capitalism that was limited to the motivational capacity of ethically unbounded greed (i.e. the ideal type being the speculator, trader, or mercantile adventurer).
With that in mind, here's something to think about from the founder of the extremely innovative and amazingly efficient Khan Academy:
Question: Are you interested in turning this into a business? Maybe with some VC funding?
Answer: I've been approached several times, but it just didn't feel right. When I'm 80, I want to feel that I helped give access to a world-class education to billions of students around the world. Sounds a lot better than starting a business that educates some subset of the developed world that can pay $19.95/month and eventually selling it to some text book company or something. I already have a beautiful wife, a hilarious son, two hondas and a decent house. What else does a man need? With that said, if you are a social venture capitalist and are looking to deploy capital with the highest possible social return per dollar invested, we should talk. I think you'll find that there is no more measurable, scalable and high impact way to educate the world.
Webinar: “Cultivating the Executive Mind: Is Mindfulness the Key to 21st Century Economic Survival?”
Peter Drucker, the founder of the discipline of modern management, asserted that making knowledge workers productive was the key to economic survival for the developed economies. Though knowledge workers use their minds to make a living, are they ever taught to use their minds more effectively? This webinar discusses my decade-old mindfulness program at the Drucker School of Management designed to teach managers to manage themselves.
See Also:
MindCrush MustRead
Occupy Wall Street – New Maps for Shifting Terrain
EXTRACT:
Occupy Wall Street is an exceptional sociocultural hack. Grabbing eyes & hearts, they’re making it OK to protest again in America. After 911 the normative pressure around dissent & protest shifted, making it very un-American to disagree with and or show criticism of The U S of A. Occupy is quickly becoming view-fodder for the mainstream media. Spin it any way you like but OWS is grabbing the spotlight globally. Expect the election cycle to raise it as a common talking point – a good reason Occupy can safely find heat indoors for the Winter, come back swinging in Spring. This normative shift allows the many many folks who aren’t yet willing or simply can’t come sleep in the streets to be active & connected sympathizers helping spread the word, defend the narrative, and get downtown at 2am on a Thursday to stand against an expected police action. Social media invites participation at all scales.
Phi Beta Iota: Utterly brilliant. As excellent a synopsis as we have seen.
‘Arab Spring is about controlling Eurasia'
Includes Video (12:04)
The ultimate goal of the US is to take the resources of Africa and Middle East under military control to block economic growth in China and Russia, thus taking the whole of Eurasia under control, author and historian William F. Engdahl reveals.
The crisis with the US economy and the dollar system, the conduct of the US foreign policy is all a part of breakdown of the entire superpower structure that was built up after the end of WWII, claims Engdahl.
“Nobody in Washington wants to admit, just as nobody in Britain a hundred years ago wanted to admit that the British Empire was in terminal decline,” claims the author, noting that “All of this is related to the attempt to keep this sole superpower not only intact, but to spread its influence over the rest of the planet.”
William F. Engdahl believes the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa is a plan first announced by George W. Bush at a G8 meeting in 2003 and it was called “The Greater Middle East Project”.
Continue reading “Mini-Me: From Arab Spring to Death of the US Empire”
